Following a period of isolation at the start of the Lockdown, Adam Caruso met host Matthew Blunderfield online to discuss teaching at ETH Zurich, the work of Pierre Huyghe, and the series of monographs on lesser-known Modernist architects he co-edits with with his partner, Helen Thomas.
"[When we started our practice] we were really interested in the syntax of architecture - how you make a brick wall, how you make an opening - and we believed that the syntax of architecture held within it the culture of architecture. And the reason we concentrated on that rather than the semiotics of architecture is that we didn’t believe so much in a shared language [for architecture to speak symbolically]. We live in a society that’s diverse and globalised, and I’m trying to find positive ways of engaging with those things”
Image: Pierre Huyghe After ALife Ahead Skulptur Projekte Münster, 2017
© flickr / stephane333
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Exhibition
Sigurd Lewerentz, Architect of Death and Life
Stockholm, Sweden
Open until the 28th August 2022
Sigurd Lewerentz: Architect of Death and Life is in its final weeks at Arkdes. The retrosepctive exhibition was designed by Caruso St John and curated by Kieran Long, Johan Örn and Lena Landerberg.
Caruso St John have four drawings in this year’s Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy, curated by the artist Alison Wilding under the theme 'Climate'. The exhibition opens on the 21st June.
Adam Caruso will be part of a discussion on the publication Design in Dialogue. The event will focus on how design is shaped through conversations across both practice and teaching. The round table will also include Freek Persyn, Charlotte Schaeben (51N4E, Newrope) and Veronika Harder (Harder Haas P.AG).
Caruso St John is celebrating the 10th Anniversary of its Zurich office. Established in 2011 by directors Michael Schneider and Florian Zierer as a site office for the practice's mixed-use building on Europaallee, the office has gone on to undertake projects including the Bremer Landesbank Headquarters, the new chancel at St Gallen Cathedral and the headquarters for the St Jakob Foundation, as well as the practice's largest project to date, the Swiss Life Arena.
Opening
Gagosian Burlington Arcade
Gagosian's London shop opens 16th May. Designed by Caruso St John, the space in Mayfair's Burlington Arcade offers Gagosian publications, rare books, limited edition prints, exhibition posters and artist-designed objects. An exhibition space on the first floor will present a rotation of small exhibitions, artist takeovers and special collaborations.
A ground breaking ceremony was held on 3rd March to celebrate the start of construction on the St Pancras Commercial Centre. Located in an area of North London which is undergoing substantial change, Caruso St John's 24,000 m² mixed-use scheme will accommodate a dense development of housing, workspace and retail.
Exhibition
Heong Gallery
Hockney's Eye: The Art and Technology of Depiction
Cambridge, United Kingdom
15th March to 29th August 2022
The Heong Gallery at Downing College opens its new exhibition, Hockney's Eye: The Art and Technology of Depiction on the 15th of March 2022. The gallery designed by Caruso St John will host the contemporary artist's pioneering experiments in bringing the hand, eye, and optical instrument together inventively.
Caruso St John's design for Laboratorium opens this week, a functional training space aimed at Calisthenics workouts using minimal equipment.
Exhibition
Sigurd Lewerentz, Architect of Death and Life
Stockholm, Sweden
1st October 2021 - 28th August 2022
Arkdes' Sigurd Lewerentz, Architect of Death and Life opens this Friday. The comprehensive exhibition has been curated by Kieran Long, Johan Örn and Lena Landerberg, and designed by Caruso St John.
Caruso St John and Thomas Demand's Nagelhaus features in Betts Project's group exhibition Namely, words - Part 2. The show invited artists and architects to present a drawn or sculpted work alongside a piece of writing they admire. Prints of Nagelhaus feature in conversation with the lyrics of Talking Heads' Heaven.
Gagosian Davies Street opens its exhibition Francis Bacon: The First Pope on Tuesday 15th March, displaying Bacon's first painting which engages with the papal subject. Caruso St John designed the space for the work, which has never been exhibited publicly before.